You Are No Son of Mine
by Mariana Edwards
Summary: Disclaimer: I own nothing. In the Trial Scene of Book Four, Barty Crouch Junior begs his father for mercy, only for him to bellow out "You are no son of mine" What if Barty Crouch Sr. meant it?
1. Chapter 1

Mrs. Crouch was shaking like a rag, her face buried in the palms of her hands. Her body wracked with sobs.

"J-J-Just when I thought it was _over_" she cried. Her husband patted her on the shoulder consolingly.

"I am so sorry Judith" He said quietly.

"I just finally got over-the-the nightmares"

"I know" He said softly.

Bartemius Crouch may have been acting as a rock for his wife on the outside, keeping calm and supportive, but on the inside, he was a nervous wreck. What would his friends at the Ministry of Magic say? What would his bosses say? It had been no easy feat keeping the incident itself covered. It had cost him nearly every favor he had from his friends in the Daily Profit as well as his friends in the Department of Law Enforcement, bribing them to drop the search for the perpetrator. Crouch desperately wanted to find the bastard and make him pay but had the Department been following suit, the case would have been published by the Daily Prophet, and everybody would know. The thought of what it would have done for his reputation made him nearly shudder. But this... what would his friends at the Ministry say? Everybody there knew, despite his best attempts to cover the scandal up. They would guess that he wasn't the baby's real father, or even assume it. What if it took after it's real father? What if the perpetrator looked nothing like him or Judith? The scandal! He was on the verge of getting a promotion, but how would the child affect it? There was only one thing Mr. Crouch could do. And he was determined to carry it out.

"Don't worry Judith. I'll get rid of it" He replied, confidently.

"What do you mean?" His wife replied, puzzled.

"Just close your eyes, it will only take a minute. I am not particularly familiar with the spell but it can't be hard now can it? Even if I do botch it, the thing won't either way.

"Barty, what the hell are you saying?"

"Yes, Judith. I am aware of the fact that you must be a qualified healer in order to carry out the spell, but Healers live in St. Mungo's and St. Mungo's means people there. People who will see. It would mean the end of my-I mean-er- _your_ reputation"

"Are you suggesting...that you perform a miscarriage spell?"

"Well, yes. How else are we going to get rid of the little parasite?"

"Barty, no!" gasped his wife.

"No? What in Merlin's Beard do you mean, 'no'?

"I mean that you are not going to kill my baby!"

"It's not a baby yet. It's only a small clump of flesh and tissue, barely developed. I promise that you won't feel anything. You might bleed for an hour or so, but I assure you that you will be absolutely_ fine_"

"Barty" said his wife, in a tone he had never heard.

"You are not going to kill my baby. Life begins at conception. This child is going to get born"

"It's not a child. It's a filthy little demon brat that is the spawn of that monster who defiled you"

"I'm not going to punish the child for his father's wrongdoing"

"Are you suggesting that we _raise_ the little atrocity?"

Bartemius was feeling faint. Did the air just get thicker?

"This is not his child. He is my child. I am not going to view him as a curse. I am going to view him as a gift. The only good thing that came out of this entire ordeal. My late mother used to say that there is always a good seed in a field of bad plants. You just have to look really hard. And I'm not going to sit around and lose myself in a tangle of bad plants. I've found the seed and I intend to nurture and grow it. Besides, think about it this way. We have been trying to conceive for over a year, but with no avail. Now I am pregnant. This is what you wanted isn't it?" Judith had never spoken this much at once.

"**What?** Yes I did want a child, but not like this" blustered Mr. Crouch

"Sometimes we get our wishes granted in strange ways, Barty"

"Are you saying that**_ I_ **brought this on you?"

"No darling, I am not. I am just saying that I think that we wanted children, so this is the way of the universe granting our wish. At the same time, it will bring us closer together as a family, and make the both of us stronger"

Bartemius glowered at her stomach, too enraged for words.

"I'm keeping the baby, Bartemius. Either he stays, or I leave" said Mrs. Crouch with a firmness in her voice that he thought he'd never hear.

"FINE! But don't expect me to care for the brat"

Mrs. Crouch was seemingly, too elated at the prospect of winning her battle, unconcerned about her Sisyphean Victory.

"Oh thank you Barty! THANK YOU! You'll see, he'll be the best son ever, just you wait! You'll see! He'll take after you! I can feel it in my bones! We'll even name him after you! He'll be the perfect son!"


	2. A Monster Is Born

"Oh, he's beautiful!" Exclaimed Judith cradling the child in her arms.

"Could we be more fortunate? He's such a perfect little baby boy! A son, just like you wanted!" She gushed.

Bartemius Crouch could barely conceal his disgust, looking down at the Newborn Infant swathed in his wife's arms . He was standing by the bedside in St. Mungo's Hospital. In his opinion the thing cradled in his wife's arms was a long way from perfect. So did the Healers. There was no mistaking it in their eyes.

The child was a sickly, scrawny little thing. Pitiful and contemptuous. It didn't so much look like a beautiful baby boy, half as much as it looked like it should have beeen found stuck to the bottom of one's cauldron. It was underweight, and prematurely born. It was tiny enough to pass for a house elf. wondered if he could persuade his wife to give the child to Winky, telling her to raise it as her own child. Mrs. Crouch certainly had her arms practically crisscrossed, in her swaddling of it.

The offspring had abnormally thin, birdlike appendages, frail and brittle-looking. Even with the delicate way Mrs. Crouch was holding it, the brat still seemed in danger of getting crushed. They were also unusually long for an infant who's leifespan exceeded to less than a day.

It's eyes were large, and they would have appeared more flattering on an owl. They were a sickly shade of brown. The color of the sludge that pooled in the gutter of the house, or a horned slug. Right now they were suspended into space, round as galleons and unblinking. It was really quite unnerving.

And it's hair. Oh god it's hair! It was the most unmasculine shade of blonde. No, calling it blonde would be a glorification. It was a high jaundice fever. Not unlike thd color of kneazle-fever patients. Abd how on earth was a baby able to sport that much hair at birth? What on earth was it's father, a werewolf?

Oh dear lord, were people going to think that this freaky little creature was his son? What would be worse if they actually _thought it_?!

Oh, why couldn't have the disgusting thing died in childbirth? Why couldn't it have died of the fever it had obtained a few hours ago. It had come down with nearly every single disease a newborn. could get and it was still alive? It's father must not have been human. That was the only explanation. The healers were certain the beastly demon-child would die and they were dumbfounded when it didn't

"What a brave little soldier" they had crooned. Crouch noticed that they weren't exactly looking at it when they said so. They were looking at Judith. Later Crouch heard one whisper to the other why it wouldn't just die.

Right now, the filthy mongrel was beginning to cry for milk. It was not a lusty, loud roar like an ordinairy infant, although it had managed to pull it's face into a rather unattractive grimace. No, the scourge was emitting a series of nerve grinding whimpers and snivels, in a rather pathetic fashion. It really was disgusting.

"Oh, the little baby wants his mommy's milk" crooned Judith. She proceeded to do so. The atrocity commenced a series of greedy suckles and slurps that sounded more animalistic than human. It wasn't sweet to look at. It was disgusting and unsettling. It was like watching a greedy little imp creature drain his wife of her livelihood.

Never before had Crouch been turned off by by his wife's breasts. The very knowledge that the thing was produced from ber womb made him never want to touch her again.

"Never in my life have I been more ashamed to give my name to something" Thought Crouch.

"I'm actually quite glad that you are no son of mine. I'd be all the more horrified if you were"


	3. Punishment

Age 6 "Please don't send me back into the box!" Pleaded the blond six year old.

Bartemius Crouch glared down at the child with utter loathing. He was a coward, like his father. You could see the similarites in his eyes. Not that he'd seen the bastard's face. But neither him, nor Judith had those ugly brown eyes. Their eyes were brown all right, but not that sickly shade.

"You deserve it" He said coldly.

"It's scary!'' He pleaded.

"I don't like it!"

"In life, you won't like a lot of things" snapped Mr. Crouch. He was now just talking for the sake of talking.

"If you can't handle a room full of darkness, how in Merlin's Beard will you be able to handle the real world? You won't. Because you are a weak and cowardly boy! You shy away from anything that makes you stronger. You cannot even handle the bare minimum of what life throws at you! You are a disgrace to the Crouch family name. You drag it through the mud!"

By now tears were streaming down the boy's face and he was starting to snivel pitifully.

"Look at you. Crying. You're a six year old boy for the love of Merlin. Act your age" Said Mr. Crouch contemptuously.

"I'm sorry" whispered that besmircher of his namesake.

"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to yourself for being such a weakling. Apologize to your ancestors"

The boy blinked, confusedly.

"I am sorry I ever allowed your mother to give you my namesake. I should have known that you would never be able to_ bring yourself_ to be worthy of it"

"I'm sorry" simpered the brat.

"Can't even think of anything else to say" scoffed Mr. Crouch.

"I will go back to the box" whimpered the boy.

"Could you handle it?" Said his father sarcastically.

Trembling at the prospect of being in the tiny room with absolutely no trace of light, the boy slowly turned around and shuffled back to the cellar.

**Two days later**

**"Barty!"**

Screamed Mrs. Crouch. She had gone up to the bedroom to change her clothes after returning from visiting a friend, in a fairly decent mood, and came back livid with rage. She was always so calm and collected, but ever since the little brat came along, she'd been revealing more and more sides of herself.

"I came upstairs, and called Barty Jr.'s name and I found him in the cellar, half dead! He was starving, malnourished, sick with pneumonia, and it looks as though he's been there for two days, judging by his cough. He's got a bloody fever rendering him unconscious and he's delusional! Winky says that you forbid her to bring him any meals at all. _What did you do!" _

Mr. Crouch shrugged nonchalantly_. _

"What were you doing looking for him?"

"He's my son, Bartemius! I was curious about his whereabouts! I wanted to see him after being away for two days!"

"Why, he's annoying?"

"HE IS NOT ANNOYING!"

"I let him out of the cellar two days ago. He chose to go back in on his own accord"

"AND YOU DIDN'T BOTHER CALLING HIM DOWN FOR DINNER? OR BREAKFAST? OR LUNCH?" Shrieked Judith, jumping up and down like a mad owl.

"If he was happy in the cellar, who was I to disrupt him?"

"What did he do that was so bad anyways?"

"He stole a cauldron cake out of the pantry. I told him not to, but he disobeyed. He had to be punished"

"When my friends daughter stole a chocolate frog from the larder, do you know how she got punished? She got a _scolding_!"

"I come from a family that believes in discipline!"

"OOOOOH. You are unbelievable!" Shrieked his wife.


End file.
